This is the price conference officials determined was worth paying when they elected in October to remain at eight league games. This is the price for greater flexibility in non-conference scheduling. This is the price of accepting Notre Dame as a partial member and agreeing to have the Fighting Irish play five football games annually against ACC teams.

And finally, this is the price of expansion.

Growing from nine to 12 members a decade ago with the addition of Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston Colleges, and swelling to 14 this year with the arrival of Syracuse and Pittsburgh, broadened the ACC’s brand and increased its television value. But expansion of conferences throughout college athletics doomed round-robin schedules in which you played everyone from your league every year.

Clemson’s visit to Virginia this year? The Tigers’ next game in Charlottesville won’t be until 2025 at the earliest.

None of this is breaking news. The infrequency of many conference rivalries has been clear for eight months.

But seeing the actual rotation Tuesday was a stark reminder and certainly stirred up the Twitterverse.

Eliminating permanent crossovers and instead rotating all interdivision matchups would increase the frequency of games such as Clemson-Virginia and Florida State-Virginia Tech. Fine by me. Annual crossovers such as Virginia Tech-Boston College and Virginia-Louisville hardly seem obligatory.

Virginia Tech faithful appear bored with the Hokies’ yearly game versus Boston College, dismissing how competitive the programs were not long ago – they met in the 2007 and ’08 ACC championship games. With Louisville replacing Big Ten-bound Maryland as Virginia’s annual crossover, Cavaliers fans are understandably ambivalent – those programs haven’t met since 1989.

That leaves realigning divisions to remedy some fan angst. But good luck crafting any split that approaches equitable. The Coastal-Atlantic groupings have been competitive, and adding Syracuse to the Atlantic and Pittsburgh to the Coastal this year, and replacing Maryland with Louisville in the Atlantic next year shouldn’t drastically alter the balance of the power.

Besides, every time I ask an ACC official, commissioner John Swofford included, about retooling the divisions, no one professes the stomach for the exercise.

An easy scapegoat here is Notre Dame. Prior to the Irish agreeing to play five games a season against the ACC, the conference was set to play a nine-game football schedule. But a majority of league schools, most adamantly Florida State, Clemson and Georgia Tech, believe that the occasional Notre Dame clash, plus nine conference games, plus the annual in-state rival from the Southeastern Conference (South Carolina for Clemson, Florida for Florida State and Georgia for Georgia Tech) would leave too little scheduling flexibility.

So should the ACC have passed on Notre Dame? No. The financial benefits of five annual football games against the Irish, the lure of Notre Dame to potential bowl partners and the Irish’s presence in other sports are considerable.

The X factor here is college football’s four-team playoff, set to start in 2014. A committee will select the participants, and strength of schedule will be a critical component.

Might that push the ACC and SEC – the Pacific 12, Big 12 and Big Ten will play nine conference games – to add a league contest?

We can only hope. Conference “rivals” should play more than twice every 12 years.

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With an eight-game conference schedule, ACC teams will play each of their six division rivals, plus a permanent crossover, every year. The remaining game is rotated.